


like father, like son

by Edgedancer



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21797494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edgedancer/pseuds/Edgedancer
Summary: Mary Keay makes a mistake, and Gerry gets a much-needed push.
Relationships: Eric Delano & Gerard Keay
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84
Collections: Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2019





	like father, like son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FriendlyCybird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendlyCybird/gifts).

> 4/3/2020: Edit because the tense inconsistencies were driving me insane. Hopefully I caught them all this time.

Mum is up to something.

Gerard isn’t quite sure what, has been deliberately trying as to know as little as possible about what his mother does for months now.

He knows he should leave, just wash his hands off the whole affair. Get a job that doesn’t require a degree, take night classes to catch up on all the things other kids had learned while he had been studying from the sort of books that burned or bled or screamed when you touched them. When he heard a familiar name or saw someone with an old book and a glassy-eyed expression, he should just put his head down and keep walking. But he won’t.

In the meantime, Mum seems to have gone from frustrated to absolutely frantic. Gerard is pretty sure she’s had more ‘appointments’ in the last month then she used to have in a year. Even more remarkable is how long she’s been staying in London, with no trips abroad to hunt books or meet monsters. Something is keeping her here, something big, and it seems prudent for Gerard to find out what it is.

So it is that he finds himself in her study, rifling through drawers and bookshelves for some sort of clue. But there are no convenient notebooks, no letters from her acquaintances to point him in the right direction. He’s just about to give up in disgust when he sees it.

On the end table in the back of the room, surrounded by pots of fine ink and a long, feathered quill, sits a book. But not just any book—_the _book.

Gerard drifts toward it, nearly tripping over the rug in his stunned state. He’s seen the book of the dead before, watched his mum summon spirits out of it more times than he can remember. On one memorable occasion, she had even tried to get him to help her bind someone in it. Gerard had been ten years old at the time and eager to please, but when the scalpel had cut into the man’s skin Gerard's stomach had betrayed him, and he had been sent out of the room so his mother could finish the process in peace without listening to him retch.

Throughout Gerard’s life, this particular book has monopolized his mother’s attention more than any other. He isn’t quite sure when he realized that she loved it more than she cared about him, but it's been a long time.

And in all those years, he’s never been allowed to so much as touch it.

When he’d been very young, Mum had kept it locked up in a safe. Once she had taught Gerard how to pick locks, though, she’d kept the book with her at all times. It had been the one thing she had held back from him in a world full of horrors, and he’d always had a theory about why.

It seems impossible that now, after almost two decades, she would simply leave it out in the open for him to read, and Gerard has to force himself to stop scanning the room for traps, glancing at the clock to make sure she wouldn’t be back from her meeting any time soon. 

He opens the book, starting at the back.

How many people had she bound while Gerard had been alive? He counts the names as he flips backwards through the thick, misshapen book, losing track as the number grows into the dozens. And then, finally, he finds the name he’d been looking for.

Gerard hesitates for a long moment before he begins to read.

He’d known who had killed his father, of course, but it’s somehow still shocking to read his final thoughts out loud, the strange acceptance of inevitability in it. Stranger still is the feeling, a slow insistent sort of pull like slight breeze swirling through the room, until suddenly there is a figure there, hovering gently over the dark rug.

Gerard stares, wide-eyed. He’d been able to hunt down a few pictures of Eric Delano, but they had been outdated, black-and-white scans of university yearbooks and old polaroids. The hair Gerard had taken to be black is in fact a deep brown, and his father’s face is pale, as though he hadn’t seen as much sun in the weeks before he died. His eyes are closed.

“Mary?” he asks, and his voice—utterly mundane, with just a slight echo, as if through a distant speakerphone—sends a chill running up Gerard’s spine. “What do you want?”

Gerard opens his mouth, trying to find the appropriate words. Finally, ridiculously, he chokes out a single word: “Dad?”

Eric Delano’s head whips around so fast that it makes Gerard flinch back in surprise.

“Gerry?”

Gerard’s legs feel weak; he puts the book down, groping for the edge of the table and gripping it tight.

“Y-yeah, it’s… it’s Gerry.”

Mum has never called him Gerry, has always been derisive about using a nickname when she’d been the one to choose his name—a good, traditional German name, she always said—in the first place.

“Is… is she dead?”

“No,” Gerard blurts, surprised. “No, she’s just… out.”

“Oh,” Eric replies, as if he’s not quite sure how to feel about this. Gerard can relate.

“She’ll be back soon,” he tells his father, “and she doesn’t know— she wouldn’t want me to talk to you.”

“But you did it anyway?”

“Yeah,” Gerard replies flatly.

Eric’s mouth quirks up. “Good for you.”

They stand in silence for a moment, the enormity of the situation pressing down like a weight on Gerard’s shoulders.

Finally, his father blurts, “Are you… alright?”

“I… guess?” Gerard answers, lost. “I mean… I’m as good as I can be, considering my mum is a murderous book-witch or whatever.”

“That’s… good, I suppose,” Eric says, but the soft sadness in his voice has grown.

Gerard hesitates, then takes the plunge. “Why won’t you look at me?”

His father tilts his head, and his tone now is nothing but sorrow. “I really wish I could, Gerry.”

And he opens his eyes. Or—

Well, Gerard has seen a lot of horrible things in his life. He doesn’t flinch. But something in his stomach tightens horribly before the lids come down once more.

“Did Mum…?”

“No,” Eric replies, a little amusement in his voice. “No, _that_ I did to myself.”

“Why?”

“It was the only way to quit the Institute,” Eric explains, voice flat. “And I needed to be home. To protect you, though I suppose you can see how well that went.”

And the worst part is, Gerard has always known that Mum must have killed his father because he was no longer useful, but somehow he’s never quite realized that it was _his fault._

“I’m sorry,” he says, just as Eric says the same. The ghost shakes his head.

“Don’t. I… I can’t feel things, the way I did when I was alive. But I remember how much I cared about you, Gerry. If you’re alright, then that’s good enough.”

“I’m not,” Gerard blurts. “I don’t know what to do. I won’t be what she wants, but I—I don’t know what else to do.”

Except that’s a lie, isn’t it? He could function just fine, without her. There’s just a part of him that doesn’t quite _want_ to.

“Just… live, I guess,” his father replies. “I don’t know if it’s even possible for you, but if it is, just… get out. Don’t let this eat up your life the way it did mine.”

“I’m sorry,” Gerard says again, because he can’t help it. He’s heard the other ghosts talk about how much it hurts, to be in the book. “Can I… do you want anything?”

Eric hesitates for a long moment. “Not if it puts you in danger,” he says.

“Just tell me,” Gerard replies. “I can take care of myself.”

“Okay,” Eric says, and Gerard thinks he knows what he’s going to ask. “Two things.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’d like you to burn me,” his father says, confident. “The whole book, if you can, but… I shouldn’t be like this. It feels… wrong.”

“Okay,” Gerard says. That was the request he was expecting, though he’s still not sure how he was going to get away with it.

“And I want you to make me a promise,” Eric adds.

“What?”

“Promise me,” his father insists, “that you’ll find a way out. Please. If not for yourself, then for me.”

“I…”

It’s not that simple, Gerard wants to say, or: I’ve tried. He wants to tell his father about the times he ran away, only to feel so utterly alone in a world no one else understood, with no one who knew him, that he'd come running right back.

Instead Gerry just says, “Okay. I promise.”

It should feel like a weight, shouldn’t it? A promise is a duty, a burden, and it should press down on Gerry’s shoulders like an anvil.

But his father smiles. “Thank you, Gerry. Good luck.”

And as he dissolves away under Gerry’s dismissal like sand in the wind, it feels instead like a weight has been lifted away.

He has a lighter in his pocket along with a pack of cigarettes, and he pulls them out and lights up, puffing smoke into the air as he scoops up the book with one shaking hand, walking through the house and out the back door. Mum hates it when he smokes inside, says the smell gives her a headache, though Gerry doesn’t know how she has room to complain.

She’ll do a lot more than complain when she finds out what he’s about to do, of course.

Gerry drops the book on the dirty stones of the alley, a guilty thrill racing up his spine. Then, hands shaking so much he has to make three attempts to flick the lighter on, he sets the book aflame.

It burns easily—not supernaturally so, just in the way of old, dry books. Gerry watches it crackle, the pages curling and crumbling until it’s nothing but a pile of ash. He’s killed a few Leitners before, the ones Mum deemed too dangerous to master, and this is by far the smoothest it’s ever gone. He supposes it’ll be the aftermath that hurts.

Gerry finds he doesn’t care, really. He makes his way back into the house, finds the bags he’s had packed for months, now.

It’s only when he gets out to the sidewalk that he panics. He can hardly go back, not now that he’s destroyed the one thing Mum has spent her whole life worshipping. But just like every time before, he can’t quite bring himself to _go_.

He stares up at the bookstore from the sidewalk, the only home he’s had throughout his whole life. He keeps staring, almost rooted to the spot, until one of the passers-by crashes bodily into him.

“Get on with it, mate,” the man grumbles.

Gerry catches his breath. _Get on with it_, he tells himself, and then, _you promised_.

“Okay,” he says, and walks away.


End file.
